Some Notions About Eco-tourism in Africa

This afternoon, I shall write about some things I have learned from limited personal experience as a somewhat atypical tourist of African wildlife. Full disclosure: I have spent less than four months on the continent all told, most of it in 1977, and I have visited only three countries. Caveat emptor.

First point is simple: if you have never visited Africa and can afford a pricey trip, put this somewhere on your Bucket List. And soon! The great herds of spectacular ungulates, the carnivores that love them (!), the primates, etc. may not be here much longer. A headline in last weeek's New York Times claims a 69% decrease in vertebrates worldwide between 1970 and 2018. That's an alarming and possibly misleading number to take literally, but the gist of its message is unmistakably accurate.

Second point: there are lots of fantastic places in Africa to see some/most of the glamorous mega--vertebrates currently in your mind's eye. You can find "safari" tours in many countries, including South Africa (where I studied Goliath herons in 1977), Tanzania (where I just geeked out as a regular tourist in 2016), and Uganda (from whence I write today)...but there are fantastic things to see in Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, and plenty of other sub-Saharan countries.

Third point: there is a surprising amount of variation in the Tourist Experience to consider. From luxurious hotels to rustic camps...from 'real' to canned...you have many choices. There are big 'corporate' tour companies (especially in Kenya and Tanzania) that own their hotels, their own Land Cruisers, their staff of guides, etc. and will let you design a la carte tours to suit your tastes. And there are smaller, independent companies that do not steer you to accommodations that they own (because they don't own any). In general, it is my sense that you can't really miss on seeing fabulous animals. It is the animals and habitats (plant communities) after all, that most of us want to see.

My a la carte experience as a true tourist (i.e., not even trying to do a research study) in Tanzania was very, very pleasing at the time, but now that I'm in Uganda I'm a bit less happy about Tanzania in several respects.

Let me dramatize with the single worst moment of that tour. Like most people, the foursome I was traveling with wanted to see the so-called Big Five: lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceros, and Cape buffalo. These would have been primo trophies a hundred years ago when Teddy Roosevelt and his pals were shooting their way across the region. Our tour took us to major national parks during the wildebeest calving season and we stayed mostly in VERY comfortable tent camps with prepared meals, comfortable beds, warm-if-not-hot showers, etc. No physical discomforts. But the animal experience was, in a word, crowded. The first lions we saw was a pride of ca 20-30 big cats and perhaps twice that many Land Cruisers. They'd stuffed themselves overnight on a fresh-killed wildebeest. Despite the traffic jam, we didn't flinch. After all, these were wild African lions! We had not stumbled across this scene, you understand, our driver -- like virtually all others in the area -- had a CB radio, so he'd been notified of the location by technology. This wasn't so bad.

Where it got bad was a few days later in the Serengeti, when his radio crackled with news of the most elusive member of the Big Five: a leopard was 'resting' in a thicket at such-and-such location. When we got there, the scene was appalling: no leopard visible, but a copse of 2-3 trees and pocket of thick brush surrounded by 60-70 Land Cruisers. We joined the circle and after a few minutes, our driver began to edge forward, toward the thicket. "What's happening?" we asked. He explained that someone had told him to flush the leopard so everyone could see. Suddenly the tenor of the whole situation changed: we began to empathize with the leopard, a nocturnal and solitary predator that had taken refuge and was about to be bullied out into the open so hundreds of clients -- including us -- could see a 'wild' leopard in the act of freaking out. We rebelled and made it abundantly clear to our guide/driver that we did not want this! (He was caught in a jam, obviously, but he pulled out of the scrum and we left the area, knowing full well that someone else would roust the leopard. Nothing had really changed, but we had at least removed ourselves as part of that problem. We never saw a leopard (and I still haven't, though I saw fresh tracks here in Uganda two days ago...)

When you think about it the moral problem that revolted us is easily traced to tourist enthusiasm and technology. If every guide has to use his own savvy to find a lion pride or a leopard, fewer tourists would check leopards off their Big Five wish list. So, the tourism industry has employed technology to keep the customers happy..at the leopards' expense. Lions are somewhat less secretive, but the pride we saw was obviously habituated to vehicles. They walked out past the vehicles with a "meh" shrug of their buff shoulders. And it makes you think: how does this experience differ from, say, the San Diego Zoo? For that matter, if you just want to 'see a leopard' why pay for a flight to Africa?

I guess what I'm saying is that we all know there's a tradeoff between seeing grizzlies catch salmon in Alaska or seeing one in the Bronx Zoo. The essential habitats of Africa (or Alaska, for that matter) will be preserved longer if they generate economic revenues, but some kind of balance must be struck. Some limits need to be respected. We love nature, but the nature of the animals must be respected.

And I'm finding a better balance here in Uganda than I observed in Tanzania. CB radios are not allowed for guides here. Driving anywhere you like is not allowed. Guides/drivers stay on the 'tracks' (dirt roads) here, a restriction that allows secretive cats, for example, simply to avoid the roads. One may not see dozens of lions, but there are hundreds of elephants and giraffes readily observed. There no wildebeest in Uganda and zebras are found in only some of the parks, but Uganda kob (an impala doppelganger) are ubiquitous. Olive baboons walk across the lodge's lawn every day. Ditto waterbucks and warthogs. And none of the animals are being hassled. The interests of tourists are being met without domesticating the lions, who must, after all, catch and kill their prey. We cannot turn the clock back a hundred years, but it doesn't feel corporatized!

Uganda kob

Rothschild's giraffes at Murchison Falls

Finally, here's a killer detail: when the big safari corporations of Kenya and Tanzania are organizing multinational safaris that include Uganda, they usually hire Ugandan guides, rather than simply extending their staff guides' assignment for that part of the contract. Why? Because Ugandan guides have to know the animals' habits really well, not having been trained to rely on the crutch of pooled information (the CB radios). This means, in turn, that if you want to tour East African parks with someone who really knows the animals and if you're satisfied with seeing, say, fewer lions but with far fewer Land Cruisers crowded around, you might be happier enlisting a Ugandan guide in the first place and to allocate your time primarily to the country where animal viewing is less corporatized in the first place. Uganda is unquestionably "less developed" for tourism than Kenya and Tanzania, but the experience with the animals may be less cluttered and far more satisfying for these reasons.

In the two weeks since I arrived in Uganda, I've been very close (within 30') to one lioness, one hippo, and one shoebill, while also having really good looks at thousands of antelopes, giraffes, and elephants. But none of the animals were surrounded by a scrum.